Touching
by clair beaubien
Summary: Sam has survived hell - does that give him the right to breach the Winchester Rules of Touching? Dean doesn't think so.


The Winchester Rules for Touching are very simple: non-chick-flick touching involves lacerations, broken bones, blood loss, internal organs suddenly being external organs, anything dislocated, and other painful things like that. Or if the 'touchee' is unconscious. Or about to be hit by a train or eaten by a monster. _Or recently back from the dead._

Chick-flick touching involves anything that _doesn't _involve any of the above.

Well, okay. Age has something to do with it too. Look at all the years I held Sammy's hand, and wiped his nose, and gave him his bath, and all those kinds of things I did for him. All those things that Dad did for me when I was little. All those things that as of age eight would've been gross, not to mention creepy, for someone else to take care of.

But when there's pain and affliction and fear involved, touching is okay. Encouraged even. Sammy was ten the first time he stitched me up. Before then and since then he's taken care of sprains, strains, and dislocations, broken fingers, gunshot wounds, and temperatures over 102 or under 96. Each of us have. Anything non-lethal, and a lot of things that _should've_ been lethal, we take care of for each other. And all of it has involved contact of varying degrees of '_up close and personal'._Broken fingers – painful, but not embarrassing. A pulled groin muscle – agonizing, but not much to be done about it that can't be done by the 'pullee', so not embarrassing beyond the superficial. Flesh wounds, sprains and strains, knocks on the head – painful but not 'personal'. Bad guys – supernatural or otherwise – who were smart or who were lucky and landed a shot '_there'_ – definitely excruciating and definitely embarrassing, depending on the level of help needed. The Boil That Shall Never Be Spoken Of – well, shall never be spoken of. Enough said about that.

But _this _– this trumps everything.

Sammy is back from hell and – well, what else is there? I _should _be happy and I _am _happy and I will never _not _be happy that he's back. But even eternal, unmitigated joy has a limit. And Sammy just crossed it.

_He put his hand up against my shoulder to stop me stepping into the street until he made sure there was no traffic. _

Um - _I beg your pardon?_

We'd just left the diner and the Impala was across the five lane street from us. The night was dark and the pavement was wet and shiny from the just-finished rainstorm. I was telling Sam about the werewolves Bobby said were showing up around Little Rock. I was talking, Sam was listening, hands shoved in his jacket pockets, head up and scanning all around, while still offering me the appropriate responses to my monologue.

Then we got to the street and out of nowhere, out of that jacket pocket, up his hand came and landed on my shoulder as he scanned back and forth, up and down the soggy street. And he did it like it was a natural movement, like he'd done it already a million times in our lives. Like _he'd_ done it for _me_, all those years, instead of me doing it for him.

_Nice try, but I don't think so._

There was traffic, and his hand stayed there while there was traffic, and I was too surprised to react at first. Then I reached up and snagged his jacket sleeve in my fingers and removed his hand from my shoulder. He looked at me like I'd suddenly started melting.

"_There's cars." _He said. Like maybe I couldn't see that for myself.

"_And I'm a grown-up."_ I reminded him cheerfully.

"Hunh? Uh – oh. Oh."

The hand got shoved back into the pocket and the twitchiness started.

There was a lot of traffic, either a movie had let out or a really good football game was about to start, but there was a _lot _of traffic. And inside that jacket pocket, I could tell that Sam's hand was twitching to touch my shoulder again and keep me from dashing out into traffic, and his casual but thorough scanning was getting agitated, like he was expecting something to jump out at us any second.

Hell does that to you, I know that. It puts you on cosmic alert. _Anything _could be anything and _nothing _could be anything and anything could be _deadly _only you don't _get _to die and so everything needs to be noticed and isolated and categorized. And Sam was doing that, checking everything, checking me, checking every random particle of nothing that he could imagine was out there. Because when you've spent years and decades and lifetimes alone in the teeming hell of _hell_, it's hard to believe that the terror isn't still coming at you in ragged blades and agonizing caresses.

Words don't make you believe, logic won't make you believe, time takes too friggin' long to make you believe. The one thing that will make you believe you're safe is -

"_Dean? It's safe to cross." _

I looked at Sam, scanning and twitching and _back from hell. _

- touching the one person who makes you feel safe.

I tugged Sam's hand out of his pocket and put it back on my shoulder and we crossed the street.

The end.


End file.
